DAMNLAG - Modern Warfare 2 and the Art of Manipulation. Thanks Mike Martinez via Digg.Game makers have known for years that the simple act of leveling up can drive addictions or at the very least make people play more. In any number of RPGs leveling up is crucial to advancement and developers have noticed that people will actively fight the concept of playing to grind their way to a higher level by doing boring repetitive tasks. For reasons unclear Infinity Ward was the first developer to apply a level system to an online FPS with the tried-and-true RPG model of greater perks and abilities. Before this, FPSs were a genre unfamiliar with lending precise order to such things. Sure enough leveling became key to the Modern Warfare experience.

Bitmob - Indie Games Should Keep Acting Like Indie Games.Not many require that all painting be aesthetically pleasing. Likewise, not many claim that all video recorders should only produce entertainment. We don't hear arguments issuing that any other media must serve one, baseline purpose before they can do more. Such assertions would be arbitrarily reductive. Francis Bacon's work isn't fun or pretty, but it is interesting and valuable. Similarly, the works of Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren aren't entertaining, but that doesn't imply pointlessness.

I'm sorry, vanilla CS has a levelling system. It just takes place entirely within one map each time. You must earn cash to get better weapons. Unlike most of the other FPS of that era, you didn't grab 'magically' floating, respawning weapons (Quake, UT) or start out with everything according to your class (TFC, Rainbow6).

Sepharo wrote:Many CS mods (mods of a mod for fucks sake IW!) have a leveling system but vanilla doesn't.

Or if you want to go even farther back, my UT2003/4 mod Frag.Ops did it in 2003. It was a modern-warfare FPS with rank progression, medals, and weapon unlocks. There may be something else out there that predates it, but as far as I know we did it first.